A Canadian Teen Hanged Herself After Everybody At School Saw Pictures Of Her Alleged Rape

A 17-year-old Nova Scotia girl died Sunday more than a year after
a "viral" photo of her alleged rape turned her into a social
pariah at school.

The family of Rehtaeh Parsons
blames her suicide on her classmates' relentless bullying.
They also blame the police who never prosecuted the four boys who
allegedly raped their daughter when she was just 15.

"My daughter wasn’t bullied to death,
she was disappointed to death," her father, Glen Canning
posted on his personal website. "Disappointed in people she
thought she could trust, her school, and the police."

After four boys allegedly raped Parsons at a house party in
November 2011, one of the boys distributed a photo of the assault
to "everyone in her school ... where it quickly became viral,"
her mother says on a Facebook
page called "Angel Rehtaeh." Boys who saw the picture asked
her for sex, and
other students called her a slut, her mother told the Toronto
Star.

Her family reported the alleged rape and photo to Halifax police,
who decided after a nearly year-long investigation there wasn't
enough evidence to press charges for sexual assault or child
pornography, The Toronto Star reported. (In Canada,
it's illegal to make sexual photos of people under 18, so
it's not clear why police didn't at least press child porn
charges.)

Parsons fell into a depression, her mother says. She changed
schools and was hospitalized at one point for six weeks,
The Toronto Star reported. On the night of April 4, she
became so distraught that she locked herself in the bathroom and
had hanged herself by the time her mother burst in. (Parsons was
put on life support and died several days later.)

It's impossible to know whether a prosecution would have healed
Parsons' broken spirit, though. The memorist Christa Parravani
wrote a powerful op-ed in the Washington
Post recently on the toll of her twin sister Cara's rape.

Here was Cara's testimony from the day her rapist was sentenced:
“Edgardo Hernandez is the worst kind of thief. He did not steal
my wedding rings, yet my marriage has dissolved. He did not take
my legs, yet for over a year I was afraid to leave my house, to
walk around in broad daylight. October 18, 2001, was the day I
died.”